


The Call

by aintweproudriff



Category: Bandstand - Oberacker/Oberacker & Taylor
Genre: M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, canon-compliant trauma, god i hate summaries and tagging, ot3 is endgame because I can't help myself, the first chapter is basically a songfic im sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-06-26 13:10:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15663864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aintweproudriff/pseuds/aintweproudriff
Summary: Johnny and Wayne, in high school, apart from each other, and together again.-"Let your memories grow stronger and stronger'Til they're before your eyesYou'll come backWhen they call youNo need to say goodbye"





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> SO because my little sister is a 14 year old choir kid, this song has been on repeat recently in my household. I tripped into some feelings about it. It was originally going to be just Johnny/Wayne but then I thought about it and couldn't figure out a way to avoid getting Nick in the mix.

_It started out as a feeling_

It was a flutter in his stomach, a pink haze impairing his vision every time he saw Johnny. The feeling left him buzzing, floating like a solo full of high notes.  
It reminded him of a dandelion. A crush (and it was a crush: even if he’d never felt this way before, he could recognize and name the feeling) on another boy, and on Johnny specifically, shouldn’t be there, technically. It ruined the intended result, technically. But not even Wayne, for all that he loved setting goals and seeing them fulfilled, could deny that it had a certain charm to it; it made him smile, and it was honestly better than what he’d hoped would happen.

In theory, he could have ignored it and moved on. In practice, however, it was much more difficult than ignoring a benign urge. 

_Which then grew into a hope_

Wayne didn’t mean to start thinking about kissing Johnny. It just kind of happened. And it wasn’t really his fault, and it couldn’t really be held against him. On top of being a highly fallible and hormonal seventeen year old, Wayne was in a position where he’d happened to develop a crush on probably the best looking person in at least Cleveland, if not America at large. A person who happened to be his closest friend. 

“You okay, Wayne?”

Wayne jerked his head up. His eyes skirted over shoulders, lips, cheeks, and met Johnny’s eyes. 

“Fine, yeah,” he answered, and took a bite of the sandwich he packed himself that morning.

Johnny’s forehead wrinkled and frankly, the fact that he looked even sweeter like that was unfair. Again, Wayne couldn’t be blamed for this. “Are you sure? You seem out of it.”

“Just tired, is all. Do you want the other half of this?” Wayne waved the sandwich. 

Johnny took it, and suddenly all the tension of a second ago dissipated. Being with Johnny was easy, if Wayne could force himself to forget the way that Johnny’s cheeks flushed and he tripped over his own feet and he smiled when Wayne made a horrible joke. 

_Which then turned into a quiet thought_

He wasn’t quite sure how the two of them had arrived at the school football field at almost two in the morning, but he did know that he liked being there. It was quiet, save for the wind in the trees, and if he kept his eyes focused on the stars in the sky above him, then he didn’t have to look at Johnny. 

“Wayne? Johnny asked, breaking the comfortable silence. 

Wayne hummed in response. 

“We’re gonna graduate soon.”

“Yeah, we are,” Wayne smiled. “Graduate, and be adults, and never have to come back to this place if we don’t want to.”

The grass tickled the skin of his arms. 

“Are you excited?” Johnny sat up. 

It seemed like a question with an obvious answer, but maybe things were difficult for Johnny when he was around Wayne, just like how stringing sentences together was difficult for Wayne when he was around Johnny. 

“Well, yeah. It’s not like I’m really doing much around here,” Wayne gestured to the school building behind them and laughed at his own pessimistic observation. “Aren’t you excited?”

“No.” Johnny shook his head and pulled up a clump of grass. “I feel like I have more to do here.”

“Hm? Like what?”

“Like-” Johnny made a noise and his words died in his throat. “I dunno.”

Wayne rolled his eyes and propped himself up on his elbows. “Like what, Johnny?”

Johnny’s eyes met Wayne’s just in time for Wayne to catch something devious glint in Johnny’s expression. He didn’t have time to ask what it meant: his back was pushed back into the wet grass, Johnny propped over him, their lips together, his whole body pressing upwards.

_Which then turned into a quiet word_

They couldn’t keep ending up like this: pressed together on the old couch in Johnny’s apartment, listening to an old record by someone whose name he couldn’t remember. 

Wayne’s wedding was a week away. Well, less than a week, now that it was after midnight and technically Sunday morning. And yet, he’d spent four out of seven nights of the past week at Johnny’s. He’d found that he didn’t sleep well when he was alone, and he could only imagine the uproar from Margaret’s deeply religious family if they moved in together before the wedding. Johnny had been only too happy to offer to help, and Wayne was never skilled at saying no to Johnny.  
Not sleeping well when he was alone didn’t mean that he could sleep well with another person, though. It only meant that he would be less alone when he inevitably couldn’t sleep. 

There he sat, his legs curled up on the couch and Johnny curled up in his lap. Wayne rubbed slow circles into Johnny’s arm, keeping time with Johnny’s snores. 

He knew they couldn’t keep ending up like that. Wayne would be expected to be a family man now. Maggie was already pregnant - something Johnny knew but her parents didn’t, which would have made Wayne laugh if it didn’t seem sickeningly ironic. 

Wayne gently moved Johnny off of him and stood up, but Johnny’s arm chased Wayne and attached to his leg. 

“Stay,” Johnny mumbled, sleepy but determined. 

Wayne swallowed heavily. And wordlessly, he picked up his coat from the chair where he had discarded it earlier and walked out the back door. 

_And then that word grew louder and louder, ‘til it was a battle cry_

He enlisted on the twins’ first birthday. His promise to Maggie was that he’d make sure to see their first steps, and both of them had taken them about a week before they turned one. Remarkably early, actually, and incredibly synchronized. He didn't know that he’d ever felt real pride until that moment. 

He left for training soon after, saying heartfelt goodbyes to Maggie, her mother, Emily, and Grady. Not that the twins comprehended what he was saying, but he needed to make sure he told them he loved them, just in case something happened. But he didn’t need to say goodbye to Johnny, who had been a groomsman at the wedding before disappearing to enlist. 

Maggie had bought him a locket; he thought it was silly, but to make her happy, he’d put her picture in one side and a picture of the kids in the other. He never wore it, instead keeping it in the nightstand drawer on top of a book, the front cover of which hid a photo of him and Johnny at graduation. 

When he got back home, he promised himself, he’d find Johnny and the two of them would make up. The two of them owed each other that much, at least.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Just because everything's changing / Doesn't mean it's never been this way before_   
>  _All you can do is try to know who your friends are / As you head off to the war_   
>  _Pick a star on the dark horizon / And follow the light_   
>  _You'll come back when it's over / No need to say goodbye_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Operation: make myself and others cry

Wayne sent a letter to Johnny before he left for training, after going to Johnny’s parents’ house and asking for information on where he could send the letter. He and Johnny's parents had always gotten along well. After how long he spent at Johnny's house, they felt he was almost another son. Wayne's parents felt similarly toward Johnny. Johnny’s mother and father insisted that Wayne leave the letter with them, and they would send it for Wayne, but he refused to add a middle man. Not only did it feel impersonal, he also didn’t want to add to the risk of someone reading the letter and understanding the hint of wistfulness behind his words.

-

“Wayne:  
I got your letter from the thirteenth of September. I am happy to hear you enlisted, but I wish I could have heard about it earlier so I could have told you to request a non-combat position. I can imagine that much of your training has been as difficult as mine, even though we are in different branches. I hope that your training this far has gone well, and that you feel prepared for whatever might happen when you get in the thick of it. Of course, I don’t know that you will be in the thick of it. I can’t tell you where I am stationed, so I won’t even ask the question of whether you’re fighting Japanese or German, or if you’re fighting at all. Regardless, I hope your training prepares you for what you need.”

-

Wayne wanted to tell him where he would end up, and all about how his training was going. But if Johnny wasn’t asking for information, then there was no reason to.

-

“Try not to worry too much about it, Wayne. I’m not sure what I mean by ‘it,’ exactly. Maggie, or the twins, or being good enough at your job. I don’t pretend to think that you are going to worry about me, but I do know that you worry too much. It is your nature. I’m sure Maggie will get along without you. She is a very strong woman - kind and intelligent - and she has her mother there with her to help her with the struggle of having toddlers. It’ll be awhile before you see those kids again, and when you do, she’ll almost have made a good man of Grady and a nice little lady of Emily.”

-

Wayne smiled. Despite everything, Johnny had always approved of Maggie. He thought she was sweet.  
Johnny hadn’t met the twins, since he’d been shipped off before they were born. But Wayne had mentioned their names in his letter to Johnny, and Johnny was nothing if not attentive. Maybe Johnny would want to meet the two of them when they got back home. Maggie would probably invite Johnny over for dinner regularly, if the two of them started to talk again, and a sad part of Wayne didn’t know how to feel about that. He wanted Johnny to understand why things had happened the way they did, and why Wayne couldn’t stay. On the other hand, the last thing he wanted to do was gloat: “Look at what I got. I’ve almost kind of moved on from you, and I’m happily married to someone I love and have angel-faced children”.

-

“As for being good enough at your job, we both are well aware that you always give your everything to what you do. What you give will be good enough, I promise. It always has been.”

-

Wayne was either looking too deep into it, or that was the acceptance to his unwritten apology from the last letter. Johnny believed in him. If nothing else, that knowledge would be enough to propel Wayne forward.

-

“And if you are worried about me, Wayne, despite what I’ve led myself to believe, don’t be. I’m going to get along. The music on the radio that we get where I am is pretty good, and I think it’s easier to make a makeshift drum set than it is to fake a trombone, so I can still play once in a while. You must have heard talk of danger, and so have I. I’m not that worried, though. I think I’ll be alright in the long run if anything bad happens. I’m pretty strong.”

-

Johnny knew Wayne better than he knew himself; he always had. In school, Johnny always knew how to tell when Wayne was stressed or overthinking. Wayne wondered if even when he was in Germany and Johnny was God-knows-where, Johnny could feel it somehow. It wouldn’t have surprised him.  
And if Wayne hadn’t been worried about Johnny before, he certainly was now. Johnny’s reference to playing music was not only a way to divert attention from the ever-present danger of being in the army, but also a way to tell Wayne that he was coping with whatever he was fighting, externally or internally. That much did something, albeit something small, to reassure Wayne. The stories Wayne had heard weren’t just fraught with danger and death, but often ended in buddies going home, only to commit suicide on American soil, after making it through all of that. Wayne didn’t doubt that they’d see some shit on the battlefield, but all he wanted - his own safety be damned - was for Johnny to escape from some of the horrors of it. Maybe Johnny was right that he was strong, and that he was coping, and there was no reason for Wayne to worry. Wayne knew that didn’t mean he wouldn’t worry. Johnny must have as well.

-

“You mentioned that you wanted me to write to you, and that you want to see me back in Cleveland. So here is me writing to you, and asking you that we let this be enough until Cleveland. We can let Cleveland happen when it happens, but until then.  
Johnny.”

-

Wayne hadn’t realized that while he was busy pondering the letter, it had gotten dark. Dark, late, and quiet. They were quite a ways from the fighting that night, and it felt like the first time in lifetimes he hadn’t heard gunshots. He did hear some kind of din from the mess hall, a bunch of guys causing a ruckus, but he rolled his eyes and ignored it, choosing instead to look out at the expansive sky overhead.

It wasn’t like not talking to Johnny would be a big change. He hadn’t written or spoken to Johnny while he was in America. Hell, he had been fourteen when he met Johnny, so Wayne had lived sixteen years without ever speaking to Johnny Simpson. Nevermind that the six years in which he had spoken to Johnny almost every day had been the best of his life. Just because things were different now, didn’t mean they were different from a reality he used to know. He only had to find a way to get back to that distant way of life.

Many things were still the same. The sky was still the same sky in Europe as it was in Cleveland. The stars were the same ones here that he saw in Ohio, the same ones that Maggie, Grady, and Emily saw. Probably the same ones that Johnny saw.  
He focused in on one of them. He had no idea what it was, but he felt like he’d seen it before. Any shred of familiarity was appreciated right then.

He rubbed his thumb over the paper of Johnny’s letter and picked up the unopened letter from Maggie, ripping open the seal. He read all the way from the “Dear Wayne: Hello, love!” to the “With love, Margaret, Grady, and Emily”.

Wayne couldn’t keep himself from comparing the two letters, no matter how he tried. Maggie’s was longer than Johnny’s: two and a half pages as opposed to one. Johnny’s tone was more bitter and sharp than Maggie’s, which contained quite a bit more tenderness.  
What stood out to him, however, was the way each of them started and ended the letters. Maggie took her time, saying hello, calling him dear, and reminding him that his family loved him. Johnny kept his greeting and signature brief. His tone was rushed, as if he might chicken out of saying anything at all, or he didn’t deign to give Wayne more than what needed to be said. Like he didn’t need to say hello or goodbye to Wayne. He did sign off with a promise, however: “until then”. Maybe Wayne would have to wait an undetermined amount of time until then, but he already couldn’t wait to get back and ask Johnny why he hadn't said goodbye.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kept thinking about this scene and crying so... sorry.

Home felt the same, and that wasn’t all good. It felt like everything he’d ever known, and everything he’d wanted to leave behind. Home felt like toddlers he didn’t know how to handle, toys all over the floor, slightly burnt apple pie, and cracked hands from too much soap after Grady had an accident and Wayne cleaned it up. Home felt like Maggie, doting and loving and kids crying, and a gun in a drawer that got its fair share of use, despite being no where close to a battlefield - not a physical one, at least. Home felt like repetitive motions and a letter stashed in a drawer, never answered but always remembered, and a constant wondering as to if Johnny made it home.

Wayne almost didn’t want to know if Johnny came home. Ignorance might be bliss.

Nevertheless, he couldn’t get it out of his head, so he took a familiar, well-worn path to Johnny’s parents’ house, focusing on anything but what he was about to do.

He knocked on the door, and nerves rushed through his veins.

“Well!” said a gruff-sounding voice, and Wayne recognized Johnny’s father, David, in an instant. He’d gotten a grayer and fatter, but he was the same old man. “Wayne Wright. Come in, it’s been a long time.”

Wayne stepped in, thanking him and confirming that yes, indeed, it had been a long time. He wanted to add that it had been too long, and that he was sorry, but he didn't think it was the right time or place.

"Helen's around here somewhere," David sat down on the couch in the living room. "I'm sure she'll come investigating as to who's at the door. Sit down, make yourself at home."

"Oh, thank you," Wayne nodded curtly, and did as he was told, despite being unable to relax his shoulders. A photograph of Johnny sat on the mantle across from him, and next to it laid a stack of letters - likely Johnny’s. On top of the stack of papers, Wayne could barely see the distinct yellow color of a telegram.

"What brings you around today, Wayne? When did you get back?"

Wayne swallowed, hoping to dissolve the lump in his throat. "I just thought I should come over. I got back about a week ago and felt like I should check up on you all."

He heard a crash from upstairs, and turned around to see Johnny's mother, Helen, dressed in a black dress, thundering down the stairs towards the two of them.

"Wayne!" she called, her cheeks rounding in a smile as she held out her hands.

Wayne stood up, bracing himself for the hug he knew was coming.

"I'm so happy to see you," she gushed, squeezing his shoulders in an embrace. "After having you and Johnny gone for so long-"

She left her sentence hanging, as if she couldn't bear to finish it.

“Well, I’m sure you know, Wayne.”

He paused, not wanting to ask, and trying to piece things together. The telegram, the letters and the photograph, the black clothing - Wayne had to focus on breathing steadily to get the words out of his mouth.

“Is - did Johnny make it back?”

The most deafening, terrifying, earth-shattering moment passed in which Wayne became convinced the next word out of Helen’s mouth would be ‘no’.

Instead, what she said was: “Oh, honey, yes. Yes, he’s home. He and his sister are at his apartment, they’re on their way over for dinner now, and he’s absolutely alright.”

“Well,” David said unsurely, his head tilting, and Wayne’s head snapped back up to attention.

Helen threw out her arm and hit her husband in the stomach. “He’s fine,” she insisted, her voice more than a little desperate. “He just-”

David sighed. “Wayne, you oughta know that Johnny got hurt real bad. Brain injury.”

Wayne’s forehead wrinkled all on its own.

“He probably won’t-”

The front door opened, and Wayne recognized the familiar head of long, brown curls that bounced as Nancy Gardener, once Nancy Simpson, walked through the doorway, adorned in a bright blue - not black - dress. Wayne would have called out to her, said hello, asked how she was doing, if he hadn’t been caught off guard by another head of brown curls stepping in.

Johnny’s eyes, always bright and intelligent and excited, swept the room with a kind of humorous intrigue, and for a second, seeing him like this felt familiar. If being home didn’t feel right before, it did now. Seeing Johnny was home.

At least it was, right up until Johnny looked at him. And his eyes, happy and clever, dulled in confusion.

“You’re-” Johnny pointed at Wayne, and then spun around, so his back was to the living room. He picked something up off the tiny table in the entry room. A photograph. He held it up, to show the people who watched him. “You’re this person.”

Upon inspection, Wayne found that he was indeed the person in the photograph. It was of Johnny and Wayne in high school, sitting in front of the Simpson house, smiling wide. “Yes,” Wayne choked out. “That’s me.”

Johnny lowered the photograph, but didn’t set it back in its spot. “They, um, Nancy and mom and dad, have told me your name but I - I don’t remember what it is.”

Every pair of eyes in the room turned to Wayne, and he forced himself to keep his face relaxed, despite feeling like he’d fired a gun and now he couldn’t stand. “Oh. Uh, Wayne. Lieutenant Wayne Wright,” he defaulted to his title, and it felt like he was meeting Johnny for the first time. “We were friends - good friends - in high school, before we went overseas.”

Johnny shook his head. “Right, okay. Sorry, I forget a lot. My jeep flipped, you know, three times. And I had three surgeries, three I’m telling you-”

Johnny’s family rolled their eyes. Wayne wondered how many times they had heard this story. He couldn’t say he minded much. After all, Johnny was here, in front of him, looking like he always had. That in it of itself was a kind of miracle. And if Wayne pretended, let himself believe for a moment, that Johnny had made it back okay, then he really did look like he always had.

But of course, neither of them were the same as they always had been; too much had changed. Wayne was different, and so was Johnny. To pretend anything less was cruel to both himself and his friend.

“Wayne,” Helen said, interrupting his thoughts. “Stay for dinner.”

“I shouldn’t,” Wayne shook his head. “Emily and Grady - my kids are at home. I should have dinner with them and their mom instead. Thank you though. It’s been great to see all of you.”

He succumbed to one last hug from Mrs. Simpson, and another from Nancy, and a clap on the back from David. He smiled at Johnny on his way out the door, nodding like the two of them had just finished a business deal, and then reprimanded himself for it. There was no need to make things awkward with Johnny, not if he couldn’t remember what had happened - how Wayne left, how angry both of them had been. But it wasn’t like Wayne could forget it, so it would have to end like that. Curt and awkward, a strange kind of memory lingering in his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uggghhh im not too pleased with the end but it's late and im TIred
> 
> (did I have anyone going with thinking that maybe Johnny was dead? I mean I tagged it as ot3 eventually, so yall are probably smarter than that, but I thought about toying with you)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> laskdjfka I don't like this chapter much whoops. it moves really fast. BUT! some mcmad/mcdad for yall. go nuts

Life without Johnny hurt, plain and simple. Everything - eating, sleeping, breathing - without Johnny hurt. It intensified tenfold now that Maggie felt a million miles away when she was right there (although that was probably Wayne's fault), and the kids kissed her goodnight but not him, because daddy wasn't very nice to talk to. Wayne saw it as it was, and understood, but it hurt.   
And Johnny would have made it better, all of it. But he had to find a way to make some kind of routine, some kind of order, even if no one would help him or adhere to his rules. 

Things felt good, for a while. Wayne booked more and more gigs, brought in enough cash to cover what Maggie couldn't, and gave into his brain when it told him he had to do something, because it felt right. Playing and routine were the only thing he could count on, and when he could keep them one way or another, things were good. 

Wayne knew that Cleveland wasn't a small town by any means. He knew that there were enough people living there that he could go weeks on end and be in different places around town and never see the same person twice. Even the jazz club scene was pretty big, but that didn't mean he was alone.   
He knew that, but Nick was the first person to make him believe it. Nick Radel, first class trumpet, first class bastard. He was a talented man, so much so that he overflowed with music. Wayne didn't think it narcissistic to say that he believed himself and Nick to be in the same caste of musicians in Cleveland.   
The two of them had a lot in common, actually: service history, work ethic, passion for music, goals of making enough money to one day make everything okay again. This made it so that the two of them played well together. Despite seeming to never get along, Nick and Wayne predicted each others' playing styles like they were their own, and accommodated to make the sound work.   
So it shouldn't have surprised Wayne to continually run into Nick at different gigs. Oliver's, The Blue Wisp, all of them. If Wayne had played there, so had Nick, and they had probably played together. 

Nick didn't like Wayne, that much was obvious. When they played together, they were polite enough, most of the time. Wayne considered himself lucky to get through a gig with Nick with five or fewer arguments and biting remarks. Wayne was guilty of rudeness as well, of course, but nowhere near Nick's level. So it did surprise Wayne when Nick walked up to him, a scrawny, excited man in tow.

“Nick Radel!” Wayne blinked when he realized who it was. “How are you?”

“I’m okay.” Nick’s voice was gruff, like he was about to announce that someone had died. “This is Donny Novitski, he’s making a band of vets, and he was wondering if you’d play with us.”

Wayne didn’t have the brain capacity to point out the many things wrong with those two sentences. The lack of a greeting and reciprocity for Wayne’s expression of care for how Nick was, the quickly cut off introduction to whoever the hell Donny Novitski was, the fact that ‘he’ was wondering if Wayne would play with ‘us’. As if Donny was the one to suggest Wayne, when it had obviously been Nick.   
So Wayne didn’t concern himself with addressing any of those; he shoved his hands in his pockets, ignoring Donny’s outstretched hand, and said “When do we play?”

And when Donny asked if he knew a drummer who was also a vet, he fucked himself over and answered the best he could.

-

It turned out, Wayne could almost ignore Johnny completely. Wayne was too busy trying to make sure things went as they should. Donny was relentlessly ignorant of how a band should be run, which seemed foreign to Wayne. Everyone in the band had been in the service too; they knew how strict things needed to be to keep going, and keep going well.  
Besides, it wasn’t like Johnny really knew the difference; if he remembered the last awkward interaction that he and Wayne had, he didn’t let on. He even introduced himself to Wayne at the first one or two rehearsals, which Wayne took to mean that Johnny had forgotten all about him. They were better off for it, Wayne was almost positive. Now, he could see Johnny often, but didn’t have to face the awkwardness of explaining how everything had happened, and he still got to go home to Maggie, Grady, and Emily at the end of the day.

Well, sort of. He loved seeing his family after rehearsal, but as gigs went later and later (despite Donny’s promises - one day, Wayne was just going to walk out), it got so he could only see the kids if he went into their bedrooms to pull the blankets further over them and whisper a ‘goodnight’. Maggie stopped waiting up eventually, too.   
He saw them briefly in the mornings, but Emily and Grady pretended he wasn’t there, and when he picked them up from school, they wanted nothing to do with him, and he wanted to do with his gun what he felt compelled to do anyway, so he left them alone. They were old enough now that they could look after themselves, and they had homework to keep them busy. It hardly mattered that he wasn’t around until Maggie asked about how he was spending time with the two of them, and he was forced to admit that he didn’t. She hadn't been pleased. 

-

Rehearsals, gigs, days at home droned on. Julia Trojan joined the band. Even if he couldn’t find the words to say it aloud to her, he thought she was a good addition. Her voice was nice to listen to, even comforting, and he liked the way she talked to the band. 

As the Cleveland competition drew nearer, working with the band got easier. Not easy, just easier. 

And as they won the competition and lost the promise of a free trip to New York, Wayne felt like he finally got it. Here he was, surrounded by people who understood what he had done, the crimes he had committed, the battles he had won and lost, even if they expressed it differently. And dammit, he understood how they felt too, so he wasn’t about to let this thing go. Like Donny said, anything they could get would be enough. Every gig would be enough; they’d make it be enough. 

So he saw the kids and Maggie less. So he spent more time with Johnny, and Davy, and Donny and Julia, and Jimmy, and with Nick. 

-

Nick, for all his faults, was easy to talk to. Wayne could fall into something quasi-comfortable with Nick, something like banter. Something about things they’d done in the past, when they lived in Cleveland and Nick went to the rival high school. Something about how the kids were doing, how Wayne had noticed a spelling test on the refrigerator a few weeks ago with ‘100%’ scrawled on top in red. Something about Duke Ellington. 

Something about “I’ve been staying at a hotel for the past week.” 

Something about “shit, Lieutenant,” and “get your things and come to my place.”

So he did, moving in in less than an hour, ignoring Nick when he muttered something about being a “screwy nutcase”. Again. 

-

“I made too much coffee,” Nick grumbled, shoving a mug at Wayne one morning, not long after Wayne started sleeping on the couch. “Drink up.”

Wayne supressed a smile and did as he was told. He started to notice that Nick kept the kitchen a little cleaner after Wayne expressed how much he hated it. 

“D’you mind if I play music?” Nick would ask in the mornings sometimes. 

Wayne always replied the same: “it’s your house.”

Until one day, Nick didn’t ask anymore. And Wayne wondered if it was because Nick knew it was his house and didn’t care what Wayne thought, or because he didn’t want to hear Wayne tell him that it was his house, since that wasn’t quite true anymore. They both lived there. Was this their house?

“Hey,” Wayne breathed as the music played, filling the room with a low hum. “I was thinking that maybe I could get a place of my own soon. Um. An apartment, maybe close to downtown, so I can get to clubs for gigs. What do you think?”

Nick looked up, and his eyebrows wrinkled. “I think I don’t know why you’d do that.”

“What do you mean? I’m not paying rent, but I’m still sleeping on your couch. I’m not cleaning anymore since you’re keeping things clean now, which I know is just for me, because you’re actually a nicer bastard than you think you are.” Wayne blinked as Nick stood up. “I figured since I’m not doing anything, you’d want me out.”

The lines on Nick’s face dissolved as he leaned in. “You’re an idiot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't want to write a kiss so I just,,, didn't. It's implied. They kissed. Things happened. 
> 
> Like I said, I'm not super sure about this chapter and it's mostly unedited because im laaaazy but if you feel nice, comments would be much appreciated to help boost my confidence


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!!! Here's the last chapter! It's unedited because I wanted to post it tonight hhhh

Nick and Wayne tried to keep their relationship quiet, really they did. They even strategized different ways to make sure that no one, no matter how close they got to Nick and Wayne, would find out about it. They decided to keep hands to themselves (not much of a challenge for Wayne) when they were in the company of other people. They discussed that they could keep their distance from each other at practice, and even argue a bit, so they didn’t tip anyone off to a lack of animosity that might lurk just under the surface.   
They thought they were doing well. Although Julia was inclined to see what others did not, Donny, Davy, and even Jimmy, were all oblivious, too wrapped up in their own issues, drama, and the constant looming topic of getting the band to New York City, no matter what. 

Wayne didn’t think Johnny noticed anything about the relationship, but there might have been something else. Every time Johnny and Wayne made eye contact, Johnny’s face grew sad, almost confused. His eyes studied Wayne like he was trying to solve a puzzle to which he didn’t truly want the answer. Whether this was because Johnny couldn’t remember who Wayne was, or why he recognized him, or because Johnny didn’t understand why Wayne had recommended him for the band and then ignored him for nearly months on end, Wayne wasn’t sure. All he knew for certain was that he felt like shit about it. But how to solve a problem that would only recreate itself the next day or even before that, when Johnny forgot?

“Why make a bed if you’re just going to sleep in it again?” Nick liked to ask Wayne, when he stressed about making sure the sheets were pulled tautly. “It’ll be messed up in twenty-four hours anyway.”

“It’s worth it,” Wayne retorted every time. 

Worth it. To resolve something, make it bearable to live with, for just a day. Worth it, to spend time and energy and worry about something minute.   
Wayne wondered if maybe he was thinking too deep into it, avoiding Johnny by selfishly reflecting on his own misdeeds and reasonings rather than getting out of his head and solving the issue.   
The solution, he decided one night after much too much tossing and turning and waking Nick up more than once, was to forget it as best as he could. He’d tried it before, of course, to limited results, but now he had something with which he could preoccupy himself. Two things, actually: the upcoming contest and making their way to New York, and Nick.   
Nick distracted him best, sitting on the couch at night after a long practice and fussing with the ends of Wayne’s sleeves - not his hands - because Nick needed something to fidget with and Wayne’s hands didn’t want to be held. Or he would ask to talk, telling Wayne about a student whose progress was “actually going really well, even though he sounded like a yowling cat when he started playing.” Sometimes they talked about the contest, or what they thought New York would be like, but mostly they stayed away from the topic, too tired of talking about it with the band to bring it into their home as well. Wayne could stay as silent or as talkative as he wanted, adding in comments about his kids’ progress, complimenting Nick on being a good teacher, or humming in interest. It was nice to have something else to think about besides guilt, which had only been hurting him. 

Truly, it wasn’t until after the band was in New York that the subjects of Wayne and Nick and Wayne and Johnny were broached.   
Nick brought up the subject of Johnny that night in the hotel. 

"You suggested Johnny, right?" he didn't look at Wayne as he asked, instead focusing on tracing the skyline of the city on the window. "For the band?"

Wayne grimaced instinctively, but refrained from lying. He'd already established that if Nick was trusting him, he'd tell the truth as often as possible. Nick didn't have reserves of trust to give away, and Wayne certainly wasn't planning on betraying what Nick had already given him. 

"Yes," he answered simply.

Nick turned around then, biting his lips as if considering how to phrase his question. "So did you two know each other before the war? Or did you meet after it, like us?"

"Before, actually. In high school."

"Oh. Were you close?"

Wayne rubbed his hands over the comforter. "Yeah. We were good friends back then. School band, you know."

"So why don't you ever talk to him?" Nick sat down next to Wayne on top of the bed. "You've avoided him ever since the band started practicing."

_Not lying, not lying, not lying._

Wayne took a deep breath. "He didn't remember me, Nick. I went to his house to see if he made it back and the only reason he recognized my face was because there was a photo in his house of the two of us together, our faces pressed next to each other, grinning like nothing in the world was wrong, something like a million years ago."   
Words tumbled out like gunshots. "My face is in a framed photograph on the table in the first room in his parents' house, and he had to ask me what my name was. Because he didn't remember. And-" he swallowed, because he wasn't going to regress to crying about this moment, he wasn't "-I can't deal with having him ask that question again, and I can't handle him asking about high school, because I don't want to have to relive when we were close if we aren't now."

Nick was silent for a moment. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright."

"It's not. It's not fucking okay."

Wayne looked up at him, and Nick's face twisted in anger. "We lost too many people already. It's not fair that he got taken from you too."

"It's not like he's dead, Nick," Wayne shook his head. "He's not gone. If anything, he's the only one I even kind of have left from before the war."

Nick turned his head towards Wayne, his eyes dark with the new angle that kept the light from the city off of his face. "Can I?" he asked, and looked pointedly at Wayne's shoulder. 

Wayne nodded, and felt pressure as Nick's head rested there. 

“If you’ve still got him, you should talk to him about what happened. There’s plenty of people we don’t have,” Nick whispered. “So you should connect with the ones you do. You know that, right?”

“Yes.”

“So why haven’t you done it? I think it’s time.”

Wayne sighed, and wished more than anything he could disappear. 

“Wayne,” Nick sat up again. “Are you not telling me something?”

“Yeah, um. You aren’t going to like it.” 

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. That’s alright.” Nick laid back down, but didn’t use Wayne as a pillow, which Wayne was both grateful and sad for. 

“No, I want to. It’s just -” he sighed again. He wouldn’t lie, he wouldn’t keep things hidden, he wouldn’t cheat Nick out of important information. “Before Maggie and I got married, Johnny and I were together. We were dumb kids. It was just after high school, all the way up until the night before the wedding.”

“Jesus,” Nick breathed. “You went behind Maggie’s back.”

“I loved her, I really did,” Wayne defended himself, and truthfully. “But I think she never felt quite right, quite safe. Johnny did, and always had. I loved him, couldn't stop loving him, but the wedding came and I couldn’t very well call off my own wedding to go be with a man. He knew that, but I think he wanted me to try, and he enlisted. And then I enlisted. And then we came home and. You know.”

Nick hummed, and then sat in silence for a moment. “Yeah, I do know.”

Wayne assumed they were going to leave it at that from Nick’s reaction, and leaned over, reaching across Nick, to turn off the lamp that sat on the bedside table. On his way back, Nick leaned up and kissed his cheek in the dim light, and Wayne smiled. 

A few minutes passed, and Wayne wondered if Nick had fallen asleep, despite still being in his day clothes. It wouldn’t be the first time. 

“Do you still love him?” Nick asked, breaking the quiet. 

“What?”

Nick rolled onto his side. “You said you couldn’t just stop loving him. So do you still love him?”

Wayne thought about it. “I’m not sure. I probably would, if I talked to him. That’s why I haven’t.”

“Talk to him. You owe both of you that.”

-

Davy asked if the two of them were together on the train ride home. The seven of them were in a private compartment, so no one else could hear when he asked if they were homos. He stole a look at Nick, who nodded, and Wayne gave the honest answer that yes, they were together. And he made it very clear that this was about trust. He trusted them with this, Nick trusted them with this; that was no easy feat. Donny smiled, as did Julia. Davy made a comment, something about: “well, aren’t we all”. Jimmy touched Nick’s shoulder gently, a brush and a smile to build a house on.   
And Johnny looked sad. Uncomfortable and wistful all at the same time. Wayne’s heart twisted, and he forced himself to look out the window. 

-

Cleveland never really changed. A big city was a big city, whether or not Wayne was semi-famous. 

He sat down next to Johnny the day after they got back, finding a time in all the hubbub of the post-competition glow to breathe and tell the unfortunately critical truth. 

“Oh,” Johnny sighed when Wayne was done. “That makes a lot of sense, actually.”

“It does?”

Johnny nodded. “That’s why I kept wanting to talk to you, I think. But I didn’t know what to say.”

"I'm sorry," Wayne admitted. "I should have said something earlier."

"No, don't be sorry. I wanted to remember on my own, but I don't think that would have happened. So I'm glad you told me now and not earlier."

Wayne started to stand up. 

"Can you -" Johnny reached out and grabbed Wayne's wrist, pulling him back down. Wayne didn't flinch at the contact, and didn't have time to wonder why. "Can you tell me more about how we were?"

Wayne sighed. It hadn't hurt much thus far. Maybe more wouldn't be so bad. "What do you want to know?"

"When did it start?"

"Our senior year of high school. But I had a crush on you way before then."

"Why did it end?"

"I was getting married. I couldn't keep being unfaithful to my wife."

"So how many years is that?"

Wayne thought for a moment. "Three? Maybe?"

"Wow. Three years." Johnny's eyes focused in on Wayne's. “Did you love me?"

"Yes." Wayne didn’t even need to think about that answer. 

“And you’re with Nick now, right?”

Wayne nodded. 

“Would you be able to love me again?” Johnny’s voice broke. “I know it’s been a long time, and I know it’s not as easy as choosing to love someone, and I know that leaving your wife was hard and I know you have Nick now. But I miss you. I feel shit even asking it but-.”

“Pretty sure I didn’t stop loving you, Johnny,” Wayne’s vision focused only on his shoes. “But I don’t think-”

“God, Wayne,” Nick’s voice came from the back of the rehearsal room. Wayne had thought everyone had left, and hoped that it was at least everyone except Nick. “Just kiss him.”

Wayne looked up at Nick, his eyes darting over his face. He didn’t dare to ask if Nick was serious, not when his eyebrows were raised in a way that obviously meant he was.   
Johnny pushed inwards, and suddenly Wayne was sat on the football field of their old high school, gasping for air under the realization that this was real, and Johnny was kissing him. He tried to ground himself to something, anything, but it was only Johnny, and Johnny, and Johnny.   
When Nick’s hand came to rest on Wayne’s shoulder, he looked up, his chest heaving. 

“Okay,” Nick nodded, like watching them had been nothing, like that kiss hadn’t been pure electricity. “I think we’ve got some things to talk about, but-” he smiled “-I’m happy that you’re happy.”

Wayne pulled Nick in by the collar, and he thought that if kissing Johnny was electric and new but homey, it was nothing compared to the wave of safety he felt when he and Nick met. He couldn’t help but smile into the kiss, grinning wider when Nick shook his head slightly but refused to break. 

Johnny was back home. And Nick was back home. And Wayne was home, for the first time in he didn’t know how long. Now he knew why avoiding saying goodbye was okay: those two would always come back to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah there's that! The ending is rushed whoops. But of course, any comments or kudos or likes and reblogs on tumblr (@javidblue) would be so so so appreciated! They make my day every time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I'd love to hear what you thought of it, either through a kudo or comment, or on tumblr @allbesolucky or @javidblue!!


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